“Petra.”
She pushed her chair back. The legs scraped hard against the floor.
“I was trying to protect this family,” she said. “Dex has spent years working for everyone else. His mother has a house worth nearly a million dollars, and she refuses to make any practical plans.”
“I have a will,” I said.
“You have a will that leaves the house to Dex.”
“Yes.”
“And what happens when you die? He gets a property he cannot afford to maintain, two children in college, and a mortgage already hanging over him.”
Dex stared at her.
“We don’t have children in college.”
“Not yet,” Petra said. “That is the point.”
She had an answer for everything. That had always been her gift. She could turn a wound into an inconvenience and a demand into a reasonable suggestion.
I lifted another page.
“This is from the assisted-living community you contacted.”
Dex took it from my hand. His eyes moved over the form.
“Why does it say she is my primary caregiver?”
Petra’s face went still.
“Because you are her son.”
“That isn’t what it says.”
“It was an intake form.”
“It says she needs help bathing.”
“She may someday.”
“It says she has memory loss.”
Petra looked at me.
“You forget things.”
“I forgot where I put my reading glasses last week.”
“You forgot your medication one morning.”
“I had never been prescribed that medication. You left it in my kitchen.”
Dex’s head turned sharply.
I could see the moment the pieces began to connect. The sleeping pills Petra had placed beside my coffee. The questions about whether I knew what day it was. The insistence that I let her “organize” my desk. The way she had photographed my medicine cabinet while pretending to search for a bandage.
Martin took off his glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose.
